


Needlework

by ser_mlady



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Light-Hearted, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:07:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25885567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ser_mlady/pseuds/ser_mlady
Summary: Jaime begins giving Arya sword lessons at Winterfell, amused by the thought of how her father would react if he found out. But he ends up liking the girl, and what begins as a lark to pass the time soon becomes something else entirely.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister & Arya Stark
Comments: 42
Kudos: 187





	Needlework

Winterfell is cold and dull, and Jaime spends most his days with nothing to do. Even his siblings provide little distraction. Tyrion amuses himself at the brothel or library, and Cersei is determined not to sneak off with him.

“Not _here_ ,” she says when he asks, looking at him as if he’s a fool for thinking it. “It’s too big a risk.”

She isn’t good company even to speak to. She’s been angry since Robert disappeared to stare at Lyanna Stark’s statue, and has kept to herself. She’s also still angry that Robert didn’t appoint Jaime as Hand, and Jaime made the matter worse by confessing his relief at being passed over for the post. She’s since acted like Jaime somehow betrayed her by issuing the single disagreement.

Jaime has thus resorted to insane ways to whittle away his days. Wandering, mostly. This day he visits the godswood, curious about the springs he’s heard mention of and thinking he might have a soak for lack of a better amusement.

As he winds through the trees, he hears rustling ahead. He has half a hope to walk in on some Stark doing something compromising, seized by the desire to be able to tell Ned Stark his wife is fucking the Greyjoy ward, or that the brother from the Wall is breaking his vows with a kitchen servant, but there’s no such blackmail to be found. Instead the girl with the long Stark face has stolen a training sword, and is hacking and heaving at a sapling with sloppy strokes, the blade too heavy for her small arms.

There’s nothing amusing about the spectacle, unfortunately, and he doubts drawing notice to her unladylike behavior would embarrass either Stark parent overmuch. They’re the ones who let their children keep wolves as pets, after all.

Despite this, Jaime lingers.

Cersei used to enjoy sword fighting. She’d dress in his clothes and steal his lessons, and when Mother finally found out and put a stop to it, Cersei had punched Jaime as if it was his fault. “I want to be the _boy_ ,” she’d said, with tears in her eyes. He’d sooner slit his own throat than tell anyone, but he’d dressed as Cersei those afternoons and sat _her_ lessons. He’d have cried too, if he had to give up sword training for that nonsense. A person could only read _The Seven Pointed Star_ so many times before wishing to chuck the book at their septa.

On a whim, Jaime steps into the clearing. “Your form will be forever atrocious if you don’t practice with something lighter. You’re picking up a slew of bad habits.”

The girl squeals and turns, raising her sword as if to fend him off with it. She lowers the blade a touch when she takes him in. “You’re Jaime Lannister.”

At least she didn’t call him Kingslayer. Jaime moves closer. “You’re a horrid little swordsman. Swordsgirl? I’m surprised the tree hasn’t beaten you.”

She whacks him with the sword, and his guard is so throughly down that the hit lands on his thigh. Jaime curses and stumbles out of the way. _That’s going to bloody bruise._

“Good enough to hit you,” she says, though takes a step back and keeps the sword half-lifted, like she realizes she might’ve gone too far. From the trees, the girl’s wolf appears and stands growling at her side, hackles raised as if to deter a response.

To his own surprise, the situation amuses more than annoys him. _She’s got more of Brandon Stark in her than her parents. Brandon and Lyanna._ He sees Cersei in her as well, despite himself. Not Cersei as she is, but as she’d been at the girl’s age. It occurs to him for the first time he misses that Cersei, absurd a thought as it is, when there’s not a thing wrong with the one he has.

Jaime lifts his hands to show he means no harm. “No need to hit me. It’s hardly your fault you’re terrible. I can’t imagine you’ve been given lessons.”

She scowls. “Bran teaches me some, and Jon. But only when they can. It’s not so often.”

“Poor teachers, if they haven’t found you a smaller sword.” He says it to irk her. Is satisfied when it does so. Smiling, he strolls to a tree and breaks off a promising branch. “This will be of more use to you now. It’s best to get the form first. Then you can start slashing at trees. Do you know your guards?”

She presses her lips together and squints at him. “You’re not going to tell on me?”

“Neither of your parents think kindly of me. I don’t see why I should assist them with making you a proper lady. If you wish to be a little hellion, it’s in my interests to help you be a better one.”

That nearly makes her look guilty. Nearly. If she does feel bad, it is not so much it stops her. She takes the branch from him. “I know a little from watching lessons, but you could show me the guards now, so I know for certain?”

Gods help him, but he has nothing else to do, and he _knows_ it’d anger the hells out of Ned Stark. He snatches the too-large practice sword from her other hand. “Why not? Watch me closely, alright? We haven’t got much time.”

It’s meant to be a one time thing, but the girl tracks him down and asks for another lesson, making a nuisance of herself when he tries to refuse. Eventually, he gives in to make her stop. After that lesson, she says, “Same time tomorrow, Ser Jaime?”

Normally he wouldn’t think twice about refusing to indulge her. The problem is, she’s begun to smile when she passes him in the halls, and she greets him at meals and acts as if she likes him. Few people _like_ him, and the fact it’s Ned Stark’s daughter makes it all the more satisfying.

“Same time tomorrow,” Jaime agrees, and it becomes a habit of theirs.

Arya Stark turns out to be a pleasant little pupil. His own children—more Cersei’s children really, or even Robert’s as far as Jaime perceives them—interest him little. He finds Joffrey too much like Robert, and Myrcella and Tommen are both mild, good-hearted creatures whom he likes more than he understands.

But the Stark girl storms into the forest muttering about stupid sewing lessons and her horrid septa and her shrill sister, she curses when she can’t get something right, and she never complains about lessons extended too long, or blisters, or hard hits. She does not feel a _child_ as he’s come to understand the term. More so, she is a small person with opinions he can understand.

“I hope you’re not angry with me for saying so,” she says one day, in a tone that implies she wouldn’t care either way, “but your nephew is a shit.”

“What did poor Tommen ever do to you?”

She’d been walking through her guards for him. At his remark, she lashes out with her stick and catches his arm. “I mean _Joffrey._ He teased Robb for using a tourney sword, even though Robb beat him so many times he’d have been dead if they fought with live steel.”

Jaime shoves a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing. Cersei would be furious if she heard such a thing, but Joffrey is an average swordsman at best, with no motivation to improve. Of what little he’s seen of the Stark heir in the training yard, the girl has the truth of it.

“I used live steel when I was your brother’s age,” he points out, indulging a small compulsion to defend his family.

“It’s a fool thing to spar with it though,” Arya says. “That just gets people hurt, and then you have to hold back too. That’s what Ser Rodrick says. It teaches you not to hurt the other person.”

“I have no strong opinion about the thing.”

She throws up her free hand like he’s ridiculous. “You have to say that because he’s your nephew, but you know he’s horrible. And Sansa is supposed to marry him! Can you imagine?”

Jaime would rather not imagine. Cersei has mentioned dismissively that Tommen is afraid of Joff, and Jaime knows about the incident with the pregnant cat. There’s something not right about the boy. It isn’t Jaime’s problem, but a stab of pity goes through him when he thinks of the elder Stark girl, who seems as sweet as she is stupid.

“Maybe it won’t happen,” he says.

“Father can’t say no to the king. No one can say no to the king. I don’t see why. He seems a big stupid drunk.”

“You shouldn’t say such things aloud,” Jaime says, internally roaring with laughter. Ned Stark’s daughter! It’s too good.

“You won’t tell on me,” Arya says. “If you haven’t said anything about the sword fighting, you won’t say anything about the rest.”

Her trust is blind enough that if she weren’t so young, he’d think her as foolish as her sister. It… pleases him, nonetheless. When was the last time he’d been trusted so completely, even with something so small? He tries to push the sentiment from his mind.

“Enough chatter, don’t you think?” Jaime picks up the practice blade he’s taken to using during their sessions. “Try to hit me now. Remember to use good form.”

He can’t help but tell Cersei. He doesn’t intend to, but it slips the morning before their last at Winterfell, when they’re eating alone in the guest quarters, the children and Tyrion already wandered off.

“You’ve taken quite the interest in the Godswood, brother. Even Lady Catelyn has noticed. Are the pools to your liking, or are we to lose you to the savage religion of the north?”

“Neither,” says Jaime. “The Stark girl, the horse-faced one, has gotten it into her head she wishes to be a swordsman. I’ve been indulging her.”

Cersei goes so still Jaime thinks she might explode on him. Instead, her features eventually soften, and her voice is brittle when she says, “That’s foolish.”

“You used to—”

“I grew up and realized it’d been stupid of me to want to learn at all. You’re giving the girl false expectations.”

“Am I? She’s of the north. Those Mormont woman fight, as I recall. Mayhaps it is a _thing_ here.”

“She will not be here. She will be in King’s Landing, and training her to be wilder will not do her any favors.”

Jaime squeezes her arm. “Cersei, sister, what problem is that of yours?”

“If her sister is to marry Joff—”

“She’ll be good-sister to a king, and have no trouble finding a match no matter how wild she is. If nothing else, Ned Stark can ship her to Dorne, where she can fight as she pleases. Do not look at me like that. I’m not doing anything wrong, and I am _bored._ You’re the one who thinks it’s such a bad idea to spend my afternoons in other ways.”

“Because it is,” Cersei says. “We’re surrounded by Starks here, and I don’t wish to take chances. Train the girl if it’ll distract you from your idiot ideas. From what I’ve seen, she’s a wild, thoughtless creature much as yourself. I’m sure you enjoy hitting one another and playing at intelligent conversation.”

“Are you jealous? I could give you sword lessons.” He unsheathes his blade and holds it out to her across the table. “Take it. Come on, now.”

“ _Jaime_ ,” she says. “Don’t jest.”

“I’m not jesting. It won’t hurt anything. There’s no one else here.”

She shakes her head and pushes it back to him. “I’m not a child like the Stark girl. I know better, Jaime. _You_ know better.”

He takes his sword back reluctantly. “You’re the queen. You should be able to do as you like.”

“That’s the king you’re thinking of; the queen has to grasp for every scrap of influence. The Hand has more, but you hadn’t even asked Robert for the position—”

“This again?” Jaime sits heavily back in his chair and snatches a grape. “It’s a pleasant day, we’re having a pleasant breakfast, and Robert is going hunting—have you heard that? He won’t be skulking about for a good while. We ought not to fight. If anything, with Robert away, it _would_ be a perfect time—”

“ _No_ ,” she repeats, “and you’ve got a distraction anyway. You might well let her have one more lesson, for I can’t imagine you’ll continue indulging her once we leave this place.”

As Jaime goes to the godswood, he thinks about Cersei’s assumption his lessons with Arya won’t continue. Really, it wouldn’t be such a time commitment, and Cersei hadn’t actively expressed displeasure. _It’d be a shame to stop now. Arya is more talented than most boys her age._

She could marry one of Genna’s younger boys. Or one of Kevan’s twins. She’d be the stronger party in any of those matches, and that’s probably what the girl would care most about. _Most my cousins would benefit from a wench who knows how to use a sword, and then it wouldn’t be the waste Cersei thinks. She could run about like Visenya and build up the reputation of whatever piece of land is parceled out to them._

Ned Stark would throw a fit at such a notion. It makes it all the more appealing, and Jaime is in a fairly good mood by time he reaches their place. Arya is waiting for him, and she grins at his arrival.

“I need to show you what Jon gave me.” Not waiting for a response, she unsheathes a tiny sword made in the style the Braavosi use, finely forged, and just the size for a small girl. “It’s called Needle.”

 _Needle. She’s a clever thing._ Jaime takes the blade from her and tests it. “You won’t do much slashing with this, but it’ll poke a man full of holes well enough. We’ll have to alter your training if this is what you mean to use.”

She bites her lip and looks at him apprehensively. “You’ll keep giving me lessons even when we leave?”

Even if he hadn’t already been considering it, the hope in her gaze would have convinced him. Jaime shrugs as if none of this is strange. “It’d be a waste of time to leave a pupil half taught, and it’s the responsible thing besides. You’ve got this new blade, after all, and little girls shouldn’t have blades they don’t know how to use.”

“I’m not a little girl.” Her protest is ruined by her smile.

“You are a girl, I believe, beneath all the grime,” Jaime says, “and you aren’t large by any means. I don’t see where your protest comes in.”

He’s spent enough time with her to predict the attempted punch to his arm, and dodge it nearly. She scowls as he steps out of reach. “You know what I _mean_ , stupid head.”

“I’ll need to teach you proper insults also. That was sad.”

“I like your insults,” Arya allows. “I used one on Sansa the other day, and it shut her up for a whole minute.”

That solidifies Jaime’s good mood for the day more surely even than Robert’s absence. He’s being an influence on Ned Stark’s daughter. A positive one, Jaime thinks—giving her a sense of humor and a proper wit, which will get her farther than scowls and scoldings.

It really is only proper he continue.

On the journey back to King’s Landing, he and the girl sneak off as often as they can to slip in lessons, though they manage only every few days instead of each afternoon. There are too many watching eyes and too few places to get away from them, and as they sometimes travel into the night and leave early in the morning—on those days Robert doesn’t drag men off on hunts—they simply don’t have enough time for daily lessons.

Jaime finds himself watching the girl during the journey; she plays with her younger brother often, but also makes a habit of befriending an assortment of faces: squires and singers and smallfolk alike. She becomes particular friends with a butcher’s boy, whom Jaime notices her disappear with frequently. As she’s too young for anything perverse, he imagines she’s roped the lad into letting her practice with him. The sheer boldness astounds him. He wonders not for the first time how Ned Stark produced such a fascinating creature.

They find time for a lesson near Darry. Robert goes hunting with a few of his retainers, and Jaime makes his excuses to stay behind. He and Arya practice upstream from camp, not far from where Robert defeated Prince Rhaegar. They take off their boots and fight in the water, Arya insisting on reenacting the battle.

After Jaime has let her pretend to cave in his chest with the flat of her blade, they sit on the bank of the river with their feet in the shallows, the wooden swords Jaime had swiped from a couple squires resting near by. It’d felt almost sacrilegious to spar with a child in this place where Ser Lewyn and Ser Jonathor died, not to mention the prince. But there is something cathartic about it as well. Evidence of progress, that there can be joy where fifteen years ago there’d been horror. _Ser Lewyn would approve that I’m teaching the girl._

“You were a kingsguard when the prince was around, weren’t you?” Arya says. She swishes her feet in the water, toes wiggling. “Was his breastplate really encrusted with rubies?”

“It was. The prince in full armor was a sight to behold.”

Arya looks at the water. “They say he raped my aunt.”

That shatters the good mood. Jaime blinks, tries to readjust the direction of his thoughts. “I… do not know that’s the case,” he says carefully. “It may be it’s framed that way because Robert won, so he has the say in what songs are sung, what stories are told. The way others tell it, your Aunt Lyanna returned Rhaegar’s interest, and ran away of her own will.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think Rhaegar capable of rape,” Jaime says, though not with conviction, unable to forget that Aerys supposedly had been a reasonable man in his youth. He runs a hand through the water and watches the ripples spread. “He was… distant, however, always lost in books and songs. I wonder if he and your aunt didn’t convince themselves they could hide away in Dorne and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist.”

“That would’ve been stupid of them,” Arya says, looking confused. “Didn’t they care they’d cause a war?”

“If that version of the tale is true, it’s likely they were in love.”

“I bet Grandfather Rickard loved his sons and his daughter, that Uncle Brandon loved my mother, and a whole lot of other people loved people. But _they died_ , because of Rhaegar, maybe because of my aunt. Why was their love so special it let them hurt everyone else?”

She looks at him like she’s waiting for him to answer, and Jaime realizes for the first time she’s come to trust his word with these things. And it hits him suddenly, painfully that this is not a conversation he wants to have. Not one he’s qualified to have.

“It’s more complicated than that,” Jaime says briskly. “You are… very young. The problem of it is, when you love someone, it can be hard to remember that anyone else exists, or that anything else matters.”

“You’re of the Kingsguard,” Arya says, narrowing her eyes. “You’re not supposed to love anyone.”

“We can’t choose whether we love.”

“You can choose what you do about it,” she protests. “I think Rhaegar is stupid. And my aunt… I don’t know.”

Jaime takes a deep breath to cool his temper. Only barely manages, and even then, he can feel that his smile is too tight. Trying to calm himself, to calm her, he nudges her shin with his foot. “Enough of this. I hear you’re supposed to ride in the wheelhouse today, and you’ll have to clean up to avoid giving your septa fits. I’m told there’ll be tea, and cakes—” She hits him, catching him off guard this time, and Jaime laughs despite the unease their conversation has rooted within him.

“I’m _not_ riding in the wheelhouse,” Arya declares. “Mycah and I are going to look for rubies in the Trident. I doubt anyone will miss me.”

“This is where I ought to argue you should do as your septa says and act a lady, but tea and cakes sounds dreadfully boring. I wish you luck in your ruby hunting.”

“You know,” says Arya seriously, “you’re the most reasonable person I’ve ever met.”

An honor guard arrives that morning with Ser Ilyn, Ser Barristan and Renly in all his frumped up frumpery. In a stroke of horrific irony, Cersei spies Jaime wandering back to camp and gives him a look that begs him to rescue her from an afternoon entertaining Renly the Insipid. Sansa and the septa are told to busy themselves elsewhere, and _Jaime_ is the one rotting away in the wheelhouse.

Renly is jesting with him about Ned’s appointment as Hand—as if Jaime cares Stark got the job over him—when he hears, “ _Ser Jaime!”_ repeated again and again, punctuated by the whimpering of a direwolf.

“The girl,” Cersei growls, so venomously that Jaime is taken aback. He hurries from the wheelhouse, a hand on the hilt of his sword, not sure what to expect.

Before he can find Arya in the crowd that’s assembled, the girl appears from the throng of people and launches herself at him, using the neck of his breastplate to lever herself upward, so she can wrap her arms around his neck. Bewilderedly, Jaime reaches to hold her to him.

A warm body against his legs makes him look down, and his heart speeds when he sees Nymeria curled around his shins, hackles up, teeth barred. Not growling at him, but facing out, as if to guard the two of them.

“It was Joffrey’s fault,” Arya says in his neck. “Please, please, please believe me.” She’s crying, and her face is damp against his neck, her body trembling with sobs. “Don’t let him hurt Nymeria. Please, Ser Jaime. Please.”

The others from the wheelhouse filter out. “What the _hells_ ,” Cersei begins.

Jaime’s stomach drops when Joffrey tears into the space that’s opened around them, his face pink and blotchy, clutching a bloodied arm to his chest, blood in his hair. _No, no, no. What has the girl done?_ _Why is she putting this on me?_

“He attacked Mycah,” she whispers. “Then he attacked me. I swear it. I swear it. I didn’t even have Needle, just a broomstick, and he had a real sword, and-”

Cersei’s shrieking drowns out Arya’s whispering. She descends upon Joffrey, fussing and patting at his head. Joffrey shrugs her off and points his unhurt arm at Arya. “That… that _beastly_ girl attacked me, and her wolf tried to finish me off!”

Arya lets out another cry and buries herself deeper in Jaime’s arms.

Cersei looks right at Jaime. “What are you doing, brother? Let go of the creature. You heard Joffrey.”

“I hear the girl too,” Jaime hears himself saying, excruciatingly aware of how he and Cersei are facing one another at a distance. Of how it must appear they’re on opposite sides in this fight. _We are on opposite sides,_ he realizes with a sinking feeling. Jaime knows Joffrey and he’s come to know Arya. He knows which of the two would attack the other unprovoked, and he knows his sister well enough to guess what’ll happen if he lets Joffrey’s lie stand.

Cersei stares incredulously at him.

Jaime forces more words from his lips. “Let’s hear both stories.”

“What is there to _hear_? One of them is bloodied and the other is not. That seems a simple enough thing.”

“Then it should not hurt to have the stories.”

He untangles Arya from his neck and sets her in front of him, though she still leans against his legs as if to make sure no one attacks her from behind. He wishes to chastise her for it, to snap that she has no right to expect his support in this. But her father is off hunting, and if she hadn’t gone right to Jaime, he cannot say for certain what Cersei might’ve done with her. _She’d kill for our children,_ he thinks—and worries further of the consequences he’ll face for standing in the way of what his sister no doubt believes would be justice.

It would be harder to regret it if Arya was not trusting him so blatantly, or if she did not seem so small and afraid.

He puts a hand on her shoulder. “What happened? Tell the truth of it, as much you remember.”

Cersei makes a furious noise. “You cannot expect—”

“If you are so certain she is guilty, there is no harm in letting her speak.”

That quiets Cersei long enough for Arya to begin her tale. Jaime can find no fault with it. She speaks of practicing with Mycah just as he’d come to expect of her, and he can imagine better than he’d like Joffrey picking on the butcher’s boy after coming upon them. _Of course Arya would come to his defense, no matter how poor the odds._ It was equally likely her wolf would jump in after seeing her master in peril.

Joffrey’s tale is ridiculous; he’d supposedly been walking innocently with Sansa, when Arya fell prey to jealousy and attacked him with Mycah as an accomplice. For no good reason, except that she resented that Joffrey was paying more attention to Sansa than her.

Renly begins laughing halfway through, and Joffrey goes red with fury. “It’s the truth of it, I swear. Then that damn monster tried to tear my arm off.”

“Pull up your sleeve,” Jaime says.

“ _What?”_

“I wish to see your injury.”

He glowers, but does so, and yes—there is blood, but if a canine the size of Nymeria wished to tear his arm off in truth, there’d have been far more damage.

“You might have faint scars,” Jaime says, “but the pain should ease within a few days. A boy of twelve ought to bleed once in a while. I could tell you stories of squiring for Sumner Crakehall—”

“I don’t want to hear your stories, Kingslayer,” spits Joffrey. “She’s a traitor! She should be locked up, and her wolf killed!”

“You got in a fight with a little girl,” Jaime protests. “You can’t lock her up because she won.”

“This is your fault,” Cersei spits. “If you hadn’t—”

“No, no. This is your fault. If you wouldn’t indulge him so much, he might not be such a bully. You know he goes after Tommen also, and the cat—”

She strides across the clearing and slaps his face, prompting Arya to hide behind him. “Don’t you _dare_. You have no right—”

“I didn’t do anything!” Joffrey cries again, tears welling in his eyes. Cersei sees and goes back to him and resumes fussing.

They’ve attracted a crowd by that point. Bran appears and creeps closer, toward his sister. Jaime searches for Sansa, and spots her finally off to the side, her cheeks blotchy and tear-stained, eyes pink.

“You,” he says. “You’d have seen. Which one is telling the truth?”

She wilts into herself like a stomped flower and begins to cry also. “I don’t know. It was so fast. I can’t remember…”

“By the gods, I thought you Starks were supposed to be honorable. It was ten minutes ago. You’d have had to be a simpleton not to remember. Have you any spine at—”

“Lannister _,_ you leave my daughter alone.”

Jaime looks heavenward. _Honorable Eddard, here to save us all._

Sansa’s face crumples further and she runs to her father and into his arms, but to Jaime’s surprise, Arya only pokes her head around him, clinging to his arm. Even the wolf remains at his heels.

“It’s not his fault,” Arya cries. “Sansa is being a big stupid—”

“WHAT IN THE SEVEN HELLS IS GOING ON?”

_Robert. As if this could become any more unpleasant._

Jaime looks down at the wretched, beastly girl who’d started this whole mess and tries to make himself blame her. He can’t, and it doesn’t help to see his own son being a brat about the affair, clutching his arm and crying to his mother when if he’d have had any balls at all, not a thing would’ve been made of the incident. _I got up to far worse when I was a child. Most boys do. This is a bloody farce._

The thought chases away the last of his indecision. Jaime won’t take half measures, not with this. He’ll stand his ground, act the proper knight just this once, and pray Cersei will forgive him eventually.

They argue into the night. Eventually, someone tracks down the butcher’s boy, and it’s damning when he provides the same story as Arya when they hadn’t had a chance to corroborate.

As the wind falls from Cersei and Joffrey’s sails, Lord Stark gets Sansa to nod a quiet confirmation of what by then all the witnesses expect, and after Joffrey screams a while longer, Cersei whisks him furiously back into the wheelhouse, though not before giving Jaime a look that makes his heart hurt.

Arya falls to tears at her fathers’ feet, but not before she tries to break Jaime in two with an embrace and offers a soft apology for causing so much trouble. Even the wolf licks Jaime’s hand sadly before she follows her master.

As Jaime turns to go, a hand on the arm stops him. Ser Barristan is smiling at him. “That was well done.”

Jaime’s stomach swoops, and though he tells himself to make a witty reply, he only offers a dumb nod before slipping away.

He slinks back to the Trident where he’d sparred with Arya that morning. Once alone, he curses into the air, then sinks to the ground and fights the urge to weep. He’s never stood against Cersei in anything so significant, and he dreads to think what will come of it. _I just humiliated my own son,_ he thinks, again and again, but regret never arrives to accompany his discomfiture.

As the despair that’d gripped him when he first caught Cersei’s glare falls away, he finds that he is pleased.

 _I acted more of a knight just then than I have since I slew Aerys,_ he thinks. More so than he had in his first two years as a Kingsguard, as well. He’d sworn to protect women and children when he first took his oaths, but save slaying the Mad King, he cannot recall another instance in which he has done so. It’s a pleasant feeling. _I have done a good thing, and in front of Ser Barristan and Ned Stark, so that neither can deny it._

As if thinking of the man calls him forth, footsteps approach Jaime from behind. When he turns, Stark looms over him, grave as ever.

Jaime climbs to his feet, for he will not look up to Eddard Stark. “Lord Stark. I cannot imagine we’ve ended up in the same place by coincidence.”

“I asked my daughter why you would be so interested in coming to her defense,” Stark says coolly. “You understand how irresponsible, ill-advised, and disrespectful it was to teach my nine-year-old daughter to use a sword without my knowledge or consent?”

“It was harmless fun,” Jaime says. “Your bastard would’ve given her a blade either way, and it’s better she knows how to use it.”

“You should have come to _me_.”

“Because you’d have been falling at my feet to agree. Your dear daughter off alone with the Kingslayer? You’d have said no in an instant.”

Stark rubs his temples. “What does it matter to you?”

“I will admit, half the fun was knowing you’d be angry should you find out—oh, don’t get sour. Do you think I’d have stood against my sister if that’s all it was? I like the girl. She’s an interesting little chit.”

That isn’t a good enough answer judging by Stark’s sustained glower. Under normal circumstances, Jaime would’ve taken this as an excuse to retreat, but he decides suddenly that he doesn’t want his lessons with Arya to end. He’s gotten Cersei on his bad side for the girl, and it’d be a waste if they’d be barred from seeing each other in the future. He’s had his neck out all day already. A few moments longer won’t hurt anything.

Jaime squares up to Stark and sets his jaw, forcing himself to look the man in the eye. “When Cersei and I were children, we looked so alike not even our father could tell us apart. She would sometimes don my clothing and train with the master-at-arms in my stead. She loved swordplay, and she was good enough my instructor never noticed when we switched out. She retained a little of her spirit until Mother died, and our father took more care to ensure she acted a proper lady.”

Jaime laughs darkly. “Look at her now. Married to a man who called her by your sister’s name on their wedding night, who jokes that she’s frigid because she rejects the advances of a fat lout who drags his drunken arse into her chambers and expects her to take his cock while it’s still wet from his last whore. Maybe I saw something of my sister in your girl, and maybe I thought to value it while everyone else snapped at her to listen to her septa and focus on her stitches and a hundred other things that will never make her happy.”

Ned says nothing.

Jaime draws back, already smiling, lightening his voice. “You don’t believe a word of that, do you?”

“Do you want me to talk to Robert?”

Jaime stills. With fear, he meets Stark’s eyes. Immediately looks away, unable to endure the intensity with which Stark is studying him. After a moment, he shakes his head. “No. It’s too late to change anything. Interfering would draw Cersei’s ire at this point. She’s told me as much herself.”

They remain standing still and quiet.

Ned says, “I didn’t come only to chastise you. I did… mean to thank you. Sincerely.”

Jaime would’ve relished it a short while ago, but his honesty has left him tired, and now he wants only to get to the heart of their talk. “I want to continue our lessons.”

“Even after reaching King’s Landing?”

“It would be no chore to find the time.”

Stark fails to reply for a long while, before he says finally, “I will kill you if you hurt her.”

“Very well,” Jaime says, not bothering with promises or swearing because he knows those things, from him, will not matter with Lord Stark. He will have to prove himself. That is all.

Jaime seeks Cersei as soon as he is able to get her alone, going to her in the wheelhouse one evening while Robert is out and the children busy elsewhere. Normally it’d be an opportunity to kiss her, to pull up her skirts and take her quickly as he can, but she’d geld him if he were to try now, how things stand between them.

“You know Joffrey was lying,” Jaime says. “You have to know.”

“Based on what?” Her voice is cold as ice. “The word of that northern witch?”

“And the butcher’s boy and her sister, and based on _common sense_ as well. You cannot be blind to what the boy is like.”

“The boy? You’d call him the boy? He is…”

“A squirt of seed in your cunt,” Jaime cuts in, and when her face crumples, he surges closer and takes hold of her hands, clasping them harder when she struggles to break free. “What do you expect? You’ve made it clear I’m not to show interest in him, affection for him. At what point were fatherly feelings supposed to take root?”

Her effort to get away from him becomes more frenzied, and he realizes this isn’t one of their games. She wants distance. He loosens his grip, and she steps sharply away. “Even if you do not love him as a son, he is of our family. You are to show him loyalty.”

“Even when he is wrong? Sweet sister, you can’t think me so cold to fight with you if I were not certain of the truth. Even Tommen is afraid of him. I’ve heard him tell you. I’ve seen him hiding from him. If Joff would lash out at his own brother…”

“Those are child’s games,” says Cersei.

 _She is blind to him completely._ Jaime has little ground on which to stand if Cersei doesn’t believe Joffrey has done anything wrong, yet he can hardly give her more proof than had been put forth at Darry. It leaves him at a loss. He’d expected logic to win out. What can he do when she simply will not _see_?

“You won’t admit he might’ve been in the wrong? That what I did was the only right thing to be done, and that you’d have wronged an innocent girl had I not intervened?”

“I think you’ve become fonder of the Stark girl than you are of your own child,” she says, “and I think it has made you forget your priorities. I want you to stop teaching her. I’d ask for her head if I thought you’d give it. She’s hurt Joff, and I don’t like what she’s doing to you either. I should have known this would go wrong when you asked. I should have stopped it as soon as you said a thing about it.”

Jaime licks his lips. Standing against her tears at him as if he is splitting himself in two. _And is that not what it is? If we are halves of a whole, it is only natural it tears at us to become distant in anything._ Yet he can’t listen to her in this.

“I have already arranged with Lord Stark to continue the lessons in King’s Landing.”

Cersei’s features darken. “You _cannot_. I will not allow it. She hurt—”

“Joffrey attacked an unarmed girl with a _steel sword_. Can you get that through your head? He is wrong, Cersei. He’s half mad already, and if you do not take him in hand soon, I dread to think what he’ll be as king. If you cannot open your eyes to what he is, at least enough to try to fix it, you’ll be as complicit in what follows as he is, and I want no part of it.”

Before he loses courage, Jaime storms away from her, heart aching as if it’s been sliced to ribbons. He longs desperately to go back, but worries what might come over him if he does. He can’t even say whether he more fears that he’d strangle her, or that he would change his mind and give into her wishes as he always has, even knowing it’d be wrong to do so.

Jaime thinks he should hate Arya for causing a rift between he and Cersei. But it isn’t her fault. Though she bears his sister no love, she asks sometimes whether they’re still fighting and shifts guiltily when he gives her his response. This continues even after they reach King’s Landing, until Jaime tells her that he’ll report it if things change.

Now that his lessons with the girl are in the open, her brother inserts himself occasionally. He has his own training with the master-at-arms at the Red Keep and works with Tommen every day.

Once when he isn’t present, Arya tells Jaime that Bran envies her for getting lessons from a knight of the Kingsguard. They‘re in the Tower of the Hand, where Stark likes them to practice so he can occasionally spy. Servants move the benches and tables to the sides of the hall after the morning meal, leaving space for their swordplay. But they’re finished now, sitting on one of the tables, Arya’s feet swaying off the side.

“Bran wants to join the Kingsguard when he’s older,” Arya goes on. “He wants to be the greatest knight ever.” Something stirs in Jaime, and the unease worsens when Arya leans back to look cautiously at his face. “I asked him if he wanted to share lessons. I really didn’t want to, but I thought I should, just so he wouldn’t be angry with me. But he said it wasn’t really having lesson with a Kingsguard knight anyway, because you killed the Mad King.”

She hasn’t mentioned Aerys to him, and he’d nearly begun to think her ignorant of the matter altogether. He’s taken aback, feels queerly betrayed, and something of it must show on his face, because Arya scrambles to keep talking. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m only saying what Bran said. I don’t care.”

“I… struggle to believe that,” Jaime manages.

Arya only shrugs. “You’ve always been decent to me. Anyway, everyone says Aerys was awful. It isn’t as if you hurt anyone innocent.”

Jaime stares at his hands. “Your father wouldn’t want you to say that. I broke an oath.”

“Yes,” she says, mouth twisting. “But…”

 _She doesn’t care,_ Jaime realizes. He wants to laugh but fears she’d misunderstand. A moment of madness overtakes him, this girl who’d gotten him to act a proper knight again. Who’s looking at him like he’s a knight now, even while they speak of Aerys. He blurts, “I did have a reason. Whatever people say.”

Her eyes widen, and she watches him intently. Waiting.

Jaime shakes his head, wondering what’s wrong with him. But he thinks of Ser Barristan praising him, Lord Stark’s gratitude at Darry. The boy he’d been, the boy he’d thought dead, no longer feels irrevocably lost. He’d chosen to act a knight, consciously, and had been treated like one. He’d felt like one. Jaime finds himself compelled to take further steps in that direction. To reach into the wreckage of his old self and pick out salvageable pieces.

“Can you keep a secret?” he says finally.

She nods solemnly, looking at him with her father’s father and her father’s eyes, but full of trust. Not judgment.

Something in Jaime loosens when he forces himself to speak. “Have you heard of wildfire?”

After Darry, Ned Stark had treated Jaime marginally more warmly. A few weeks in King’s Landing, when he’d proven he’d meant what he said about continuing his lessons with Arya, and the Hand had nearly grown polite. But shortly after the Hand’s tourney, his warmth cools, and he begins hovering around Jaime and Arya’s sessions. When he isn’t present, he sends some guard or another to observe, so obvious about it that even Arya asks if something is amiss.

“I have no idea,” Jaime says, truly baffled.

“You haven’t given my father a reason to be angry?”

Jaime shakes his head. “Not that I know of.”

After Robert returns from a bore hunt gored and dying, Jaime realizes that Stark’s paranoia might not be without basis. It isn’t that he’d been oblivious to the tension within the Red Keep, but it’s usually Cersei who keeps him knowledgeable about such things, and she hasn’t spoken to him since their final argument about Joffrey. He’d thus thought the tension a passing thing, a combination of the aftermath of Jon Arryn’s death and Robert’s anger over the Targaryen girl, until the hunting accident.

It’s Barristan who mentions the Lannister squires. Not with suspicion, but merely telling the tale in a baffled, defeated way, wracked with sorrow at his failure. _Cersei… couldn’t have been involved,_ Jaime thinks, but he isn’t so sure. It does make him wonder. She’s never gone after Robert before. Why now? What could’ve driven her to act?

Jaime tries to talk with her, but she refuses to tell him anything.

“You prefer the company of traitors above that of your family. How am I to know you won’t tell them what they shouldn’t know?”

“Cersei, sister…”

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m doing what I must for the safety of my children. It is _necessary_. Can you trust me, Jaime?”

They’ve been fighting for weeks. His will can only hold out so long. Jaime inclines his head. “Of course. I… defer to your judgment.”

He regrets it when Meryn Trant interrupts his next lesson with Arya, a hoard of gold cloaks behind him.

“Ser Jaime. Arya Stark is to be taken to her cell by order of the queen.”

Jaime realizes he’d lied to Cersei. He doesn’t trust this. Doesn’t trust her. Not at all.

“Arya,” he says. “Run.”

Trant tries to lunge past him, but Jaime draws his sword and the man stands down. As Arya sprints from the hall, Jaime taps the point of his blade against Trant’s armored stomach. “You’ve misunderstood. Cersei wants nothing of the girl. Leave her go, and take me to my sister.”

“He’d found out about us,” Cersei says when Jaime storms into her chambers. “He’d found out, and he was going to tell everyone.”

Jaime thinks of the dead boy found in the stables, poked through with a small, thin blade. Thinks of the small girl now missing in King’s Landing; the other locked away in a tower with her brother. He thinks of the dead northmen littering the throne room.

 _“Why was their love so special it let them hurt everyone else?”_ Arya had asked him of Rhaegar and Lyanna. Jaime puts the question to himself now, and for the first time, cannot come up with a proper answer. He remembers telling her of Aerys. That choice to embrace that old act of heroism he’d never quite been able to share. She’d cried at the tale. Had clutched his hand, and cursed the unfairness of his reputation.

 _I have honor,_ Jaime tells himself. He says the right words to Cersei, and once he’s back in his room in the White Sword Tower, he speaks the phrase aloud. “I have honor.” The words are strange on his lips, but they do not sound like a lie. “I have honor.”

That night, Jaime finds Varys and makes the proper threats. The eunuch does quick work, and Jaime waits only a day before finding a key within one of his boots when trying to pull it on. He remains wary about dealing with the guards, but when he descends into the black cells after nightfall, finds Varys waiting for him in a black cowl, the guards unconscious.

“Sweet sleep,” the eunuch says as he leans Jaime forward. “Quite useful in a high enough dose.”

He stinks like perfume and powder, and Jaime is glad he waits at the end of the corridor after showing him to Stark’s cell. The light from Jaime’s torch makes fierce Lord Stark cringe, but his eyes must clear quickly, for he soon says, “You. What…”

Jaime opens the door of the cell. “I’m betraying my king. You should expect it from me by now, yes?”

“Your sister—”

Jaime grabs his wrist, yanks him to his feet. “You’d be shocked by the difference it makes when someone gives you the benefit of the doubt. It makes a man want to live up to expectations.”

They begin walking. “My children?”

“Arya ran away. Varys says some helper of his is looking for her, and he’s sent someone else to fetch the other two. They should be waiting ahead.”

Stark’s step hitches. “And you?”

“Stannis will show up before too long to take his throne. I plan to be anywhere else.” Jaime eyes Stark. “Perhaps I’ll go to Essos. Be a sellsword.”

“I tried stopping Arya’s lessons. When she refused, I told her what I suspected. She insisted on continuing, and I let her to avoid raising suspicion.” Lord Stark paused. “She tried to persuade me not to go to Robert.”

 _She knows. She has known._ Jaime feels ill. “Enough talk. We’re supposed to be sneaking.”

A hand on the wrist pulls him to a stop. “She told me about Aerys.”

Jaime pulls away and resumes walking. “Clearly it made no difference.”

“When my children were at risk, when it was my duty to the realm to report your wrongdoing? No. A mistake fifteen years ago does not make it honorable to endanger the realm now. But… come north. Take the black. Jon is at the Wall, and Arya will want to see him when we return home.”

Jaime snorts, that such a thing would be offered as a merciful alternative. Perhaps Stark has the right of it, though. It wouldn’t be leaving everything behind completely, and he supposes fighting wildlings can’t be worse than fifteen years of watching Robert eat and whore. But it’s too much to think about, swearing more oaths, weighing bad options against one another. _Can I not simply swear loyalty to Arya?_ he wants to ask, but sees in Stark’s eyes he thinks some punishment is justified.

It isn’t the time to dither about it. “I’ll consider it.”

“Very well,” Stark says, just like that. Then they come upon Varys, and there’s no further opportunity to talk.

After they’ve gathered Bran and Sansa, as they leave the Red Keep, Jaime questions his choice a final time. It isn’t too late to turn back. But his step falters only for a moment, and consciously, he chooses to keep walking.

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly self-indulgent, but hopefully enjoyable too? I can't be the only one who loves Jaime interacting with the Starks. Anyway, thanks for reading!


End file.
